Abstract
This research on press communication uses a synchronic perspective concerning eighteen ministers, balanced by gender, in the Renzi government (in 2014), as well as a diachronic perspective concerning women ministers from five governments (from 2006-2014). The governments in 2014 and of 2013 were predominantly center-left, with the participation of center and center-right parties, whereas the previous governments had technical-professional rather than political ministers (in 2011), center-right (in 2008), and center-left (in 2006) ministers. In the synchronic analysis we explored the different ways in which the ministers are named, the relative presence of sexist/non-sexist, agentive/non-agentive, and abstract/concrete language in which they were presented. The first analysis comprised 332 headlines and the second comprised 1,356 headlines; we conducted a numerical and lexicographical analysis on the headlines. The results showed: more coverage for men than for women; gender biases in naming ministers involving a greater number of citations of women with both first and last name, whereas there were a greater number of citations of men with their first name only; the prevalence of sexist language that uses the generic masculine rather than the specific feminine (that is, the grammatical feminization of a typically masculine form) in representing women; an increment of the specific feminine in representing women in the last three governments over the previous two; no gender differences in the use of “I” and “We” as markers of agency; more quotations of direct discourse for women than for men; language slightly more abstract than concrete, for both men and women; more positive adjectives for women, and more negative adjectives for men. The results are discussed in relation to the international literature and to the Italian cultural-political context.
Highlights
We aim to address this lack of knowledge by focusing on political communication centered primarily on ministers of the Renzi government, and secondarily on the last five governments, leading up to the Matteo Renzi government
The media show an ambivalence toward women politicians that can be related to the process involved in ambivalent sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996, 1999, 2001), in which positive attitudes are present alongside negative ones
In ambivalent sexism theory it is assumed that the uniqueness of the relationship between men and women is characterized by a close interdependence reflecting power differences, and with a strong level of physical and psychological intimacy that make pervasive the ambivalence towards gender-based relationships (Manganelli Rattazzi, Volpato, & Canova, 2008)
Summary
Based on these different findings we analyzed political communication in the press with the following objectives, mainly of a comparative, descriptive type. For the ministers of the Renzi government we explored: (a) media coverage, detecting the number of news headlines dedicated to men/women ministers; (b) the frequency with which their first names and/or surnames were used in the headlines. This contributes to gender visibility, which is either clearly manifested when both first names and surnames are used, obscured when only the surname is mentioned, or trivialized when only the first name is used; (c) the extent of sexist/nonsexist language used in the headlines for the eight women ministers. In the case of coherence, we accorded more stability to subsequent statistical analysis concerning the valence of adjectives (negative, neutral, or positive) aimed to explore eventual gender bias
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